Bruce Wagner - The Chrysanthemum Palace

“O graceful moon, I remember, upon this hill I would come full of anguish to look at you… and you hung over that wood as now you do, lighting it all… and yet it helps me to remember, and to count the age of my pain—”

It wasn’t until halfway through the speech that some of us realized he’d gone “off book.” The actor suddenly appeared woozy and I rushed to his support; otherwise, I think he’d have fallen. After a moment’s recovery, he seemed embarrassed by his lyrical, improvised outburst. As the director helped us lower the fallen prince to a chair and the medic was called, Thad appeared to be in a fugue state. In time, the clamminess evaporated and color returned to his skin. He drew us in to explain that such spontaneous poeticizing (this stanza from a favorite, the venerable Giacomo Leopardi) sometimes foretold a migraine was imminent. He would try “the new medicine,” he said, already prescribed for this very event — Clea confirmed the Zomig was in her purse. All he needed, said Thad, was to lie down. The medic arrived but he politely turned the man away. A fifteen-minute break was called.

Clea walked him to his trailer. I followed at a few paces.

She turned and whispered, “He wants apple pie and ice cream. Can you get some, Bertie?”

Arriving with the goods, I tapped lightly on the door. No response. Cautiously, I stepped in. I heard soft voices and warily proceeded. Clea was framed in the bedroom door with her back to me, partially blocking the view. Thad lay north to south and she ministered like a nurse, motioning me to bring the dessert.

I caught glimpse of his face, ruddy and alert.

“An ambassadorship!” he muttered, with charm. “You’ve done well for yourself, Trothex.”

“Yes, darling,” said Clea, sponging his forehead with a damp cloth.

“He took the pill?” I whispered needlessly.

She nodded.

“What kind of name is that, anyway?” he asked. “Trothex.”

“Dumb,” I said, affably. “A dumb name.”

“Sounds like bleach,” he said. His brow furrowed and he turned to Clea as if they were alone. “When I first saw you on the bridge”—I realized he had leapfrogged to the lines of tomorrow’s scene—“looking out from the starscreen… all the years rushed back.” She tenderly put a hand on his. “And I thought: How terrible that I never even said good-bye.”

1Throughout the day, I heard more than a few comments in that regard, in respectful sotto from the crew.

THE MIGRAINE DIDN’T COME BUTClea worried nonetheless.

She confided to me something I already suspected: that our friend took a daily barrage of “meds” to control various manias, compulsions, and depression and that it was paramount he neither add nor subtract from the carefully calibrated chemical concoction as it might effect a harsh imbalance of mood. Clea had seen the consequences and it wasn’t pretty. She was worried — aside from the Leopardian lapse, there were recent blips, dots, and beeps on her radar that she couldn’t yet translate — so the two of us kept close watch. Gently, she asked Thad if he was currently taking this pill or that, careful not to antagonize, in the effort to determine whether to begin the begging campaign he not abandon the pills that mattered, at least not till the end of the shoot, a tantalizingly close yet shockingly distant ten days away.

Clea and I were old hands at caretaking — Mom had been a semi-invalid since my early twenties — and made a pretty good tag team. We made sure he was well fed and lightheartedly entertained but confined to his room by shooting day’s end. While prudently maintaining a general policy against overstimulation, Clea considered the sexual act to be palliative and good for his soul, a natural antibody and witches’ brew against the virus of soft-focus schizophrenia. (She took her custodianship with touching seriousness.) Every few days, Miriam called at a late hour in a sultry voice, as if catching mossy, musky whiff of Clea’s carnal healing; though it was more likely she was trying to atone for the celibacy of her last brief visit. If she did bring up Thad, it was by way of signaling phone sex was over — the topic of his cracked psyche definitely broke the mood. She’d usually mumble something about “coming out there if things get too rickety” before slipping back into sexy sign-off mode.

The amazing Michelet had a new preoccupation — at least, new to us. He’d been contemplating a one-man show, which he’d already spoken to Mike Nichols about directing. Or so he said. Mr. Nichols was seemingly enthused. It would be the story of his life: his revenant twin, Zeus-like dad and ice queen mom — the whole shebang. Apparently it had been on his mind a long while but everything had coalesced during the trip to San Rafael. Just after our late-night parlor car confab, he’d had a powerful vision in the form of a disturbing image, nearly religious yet intensely theatrical: himself alone onstage, sitting at a table applying makeup “like a Gielgud or a Richardson” ( “not Spalding Gray!” he added pithily) while intimately addressing his audience. The makeup, he added, was none other than a Vorbalid’s, the epiphany being that a monologue encompassing his life would unfold as the cosmo-cosmetic layers were inexorably applied (or removed; he wasn’t quite sure yet), until at performance’s end he stood to face the assembly in the naked, poignant, transworldly mask of human comedy — agglutinized agony of all the lost and ruined years. He’d forever been attracted, he said, to metaphorical monsters and the tortured poetry of their lives — Chaney’s Phantom, Laughton’s Hunchback, Karloff’s Frankenstein — and nonmetaphorical monsters too: the homely, sickly, myopic Giacomo Leopardi, whom Thad described as a lonesome boy who sequestered himself in his father’s library, promising not to come out until he was “as great a poet as Dante.” The operatic stageplay would be a unique chance to formally add his own unforgettably tender gargoyle to the canon.

While delighted to see him thus diverted and enthused, Clea and I were taken aback by the scope of his ambition. That he seemed intent on characterizing himself as a kind of Creature of the Black Lagoon caused a bit of shuddering on our part, alongside the realization that we needed to continue to voice support and encouragement, which was deeply genuine. There was no question the concept was brilliant in its macabre simplicity — a perfect vehicle to make use of a wide breadth of talents while at the same time proving wildly therapeutic. The raw honesty of the thing was, after all, what set it apart. I cringed and got gooseflesh at once, which made me think his proposal had the potential to be one of those breakthrough projects an artist is always remembered by. As we listened to him map it out, I grew more excited, playing off Clea’s enraptured startles, pregnant hesitations, and bridefully unbridled enthusiasms. (Don’t forget, I was her legal codependent.) Before long I had completely lost my head, giving my word to be first in the coming tsunami of financial backers.

“Do you remember The Day the Earth Stood Still? My brother and I loved Michael Rennie. How gay was Michael Rennie? We had total kiddie-porn hard-ons for Klaatu. We used to put on these little plays — I have all this written down!” He seized a disorderly sheaf of papers, some typed, some longhand, riffling through them with great devotedness as he spoke. “I was originally going to do a memoir but then I thought (and Miriam completely agrees): Don’t do the perimenopausal Susan Cheever thing. I want Grand Guignol-in-the-round, the roar of the greasepaint, the stink of the crowd!”